Opposition is easiest to mobilise against a single identifiable target, held responsible and set apart, rather than against a diffuse system.
Rule thirteen of Rules for Radicals, paraphrased: choose a target, fix responsibility on it, make it personal and make it divisive. Alinsky argued that people cannot organise against an abstraction, and that a campaign against the system lets every official point elsewhere. It is the most quoted and most criticised of the rules, and has been used across the spectrum; in 2016 the broadcaster Glenn Beck argued that Donald Trump was its truest practitioner.
In practice
- A campaign against a bank's lending policy names its chief executive in every leaflet, and the board begins to treat the issue as a threat to its reputation.
- An office frustrated with a slow approval process blames one named manager, and the process speeds up when she is moved, though the rules have not changed.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that people respond more strongly to specific individuals than to systems or statistics, as in the identifiable victim effect. Another is accountability: a named target cannot shift responsibility onto a process.
- In its favour
- Consistent with research on personification and identifiable targets, and with its record in campaigns of every political colour.
- Against it
- Critics argue that it recasts systemic problems as personal ones, invites harassment of individuals, and deepens polarisation. It can also turn its target into a sympathetic figure.
- Standing
- Its effectiveness is widely acknowledged; its ethics are disputed across the political spectrum. Compare the identifiable victim effect and the toxoplasma of rage.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Rules that restrain power, and advice on using it